Does Sen. Murkowski Really Understand Clean Energy Policy?

June 21, 2010 12:55 pm ET
- by Alan Pyke

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) cultivates a reputation
for being that rarest of Congressional creatures: a Republican who believes in
climate change and clean energy. It's a tough sell; Murkowski has taken a million dollars in
funding from the oil, gas, mining and utilities industries in her political
career.

Still, she is among the GOP's leaders on energy
policy. Even when she introduces
an "obscure" resolution to gut
the Clean Air Act and reverse the EPA's finding that greenhouse gases are
dangerous, one assumes that Murkowski has a grip on the basic principles of
clean energy legislation.

But her tenuous grasp on energy policy evaporated completely
on Sunday. Murkowski does not understand the difference between cap-and-trade
legislation — which would harness the power of markets to steer our energy
economy to greener pastures — and "command-and-control" regulations that
restrict commercial behavior.

Murkowski's foul-up came on CNN's State of the Union:

SEN. MURKOWSKI: Well I think you've got
too many people who are looking at this and saying, a cap and trade, a
command-and-control type of a system, at a time like we are in right now, with,
with, with recession, and a— just a very difficult economy, when we put
mandates on and say, you will do thus, we're gonna drive jobs overseas, we're
going to— we are going to harm the economy at a time when most of us do not
think that that's the appropriate policy.

Cap-and-trade legislation is a system of economic
incentives. Democrats want to set goals for emissions, and allow companies to
buy and sell carbon permits in a marketplace. The idea is that government
nudges the free market toward a desirable outcome — cleaner air, slowing the
greenhouse effect, and shrinking the pile of money we send to our oil-rich
adversaries — by using the power of markets themselves to find solutions.

If Sen. Murkowski does not
understand that cap-and-trade is a market-based approach to the problem, then
she needs to stop pretending to be serious about clean energy.